Imageepoch promised a major announcement today for Tokitowa, its original PlayStation 3 RPG that promises to blend hand drawn characters with 3D backdrops.

This is the announcement:

The game's character designs have been switched to SD form, the game's development blog revealed.

Here's what Toki and her dragon Drake looked like before:

Writing at the blog, the game's promotion producer explained that the change was made after they'd created some 30,000 frames of hand drawn cell animation. This had to all be tossed. The staff pulled all nighters for two months and made the announcement today, April 1, when they finished the work.

The new art style is shown on the game's newly revealed packaging:

The game's catch copy is currently HD Animation RPG, explained the producer. However, they are thinking about changing the catch copy to SD Character Animation RPG.

As of this writing, the game's official site has not yet been updated to reflect the new art style. We expect the change to happen shortly. (The wait for actual gameplay footage will likely take much longer, though.)